Precious antique or affordable new accessory, the decorative motif adds sparkle to any space

With bleak winter days upon us, a mirror will refract each precious ray of sunlight—and the sunburst mirror seems to stand in for the sun itself.

No wonder, then, the newly married couple painted by Jan van Eyck in 1434 invested in a bulls-eye convex mirror, living as they did in the sun-deprived city of Bruges. Fast-forward to the 17th century when Louis XIV established the first glass and mirror factory in Northern Europe at St. Gobain, France. In doing so, he broke the Venetian Republic's monopoly on the making of these precious commodities, and, in the process, raised the aesthetic and technological bar by making mirrors bigger and clearer than ever before.

Photos: The Sunburst Mirror

Despite Louis XIV's affinity for mirrors and for the sunburst motif—the personal emblem of the self-styled "Sun King" was a head of Apollo surrounded by rays of light—the sunburst mirror didn't make an appearance during his reign.

According to Louis Bofferding, a Manhattan antiques dealer, we probably have the French Revolution to thank for the sunburst mirror's debut. "The revolutionaries stormed, shuttered, even destroyed monasteries, convents and churches. Among the loot of the rabble were the gilded aureoles of celestial rays that had haloed representations of the Holy Family and saints on altars," Mr. Bofferding said. "It didn't take long for enterprising antiques dealers and collectors to buy those vacant sunbursts for a song, slip mirrors into the cavities and launch what would become a vogue in the 20th century."

By 1940, the great French metalworker Gilbert Poillerat forged and gilded sunburst mirrors that smacked more of café society than the celestial realm. Soon, Parisian artisan Line Vautrin made sunburst mirror frames out of plastic—a technological innovation of her own day—never imagining that they would become an auction-world juggernaut at the turn of the 21st century.

And when bidders at Sotheby's and Christie's go wild for something, you know Crate & Barrel, Target and Pier 1 Imports can't be far behind. Victoria Hagan, New York decorator to uptown clients, said she finds "sunburst mirrors add a happy touch, a sparkle, to any space, from the tiniest of powder rooms to the grandest of living rooms. I use them in unexpected ways, hanging them over another mirror, or above a piece of art in a small space, like a vestibule." Meanwhile, downtown decorator Miles Redd, who caters to the haute bohème set, said, "They can dress up a boring space. They bring a sense of architecture and reflective surface to a room. I love them hanging above a headboard on a canopy bed."

Said interior designer Thom Filicia, "I've hung them over fireplaces, where they pick up and play with the flames."

The sunburst mirror has always fallen somewhere between decoration and art: from midcentury decorator Tony Duquette's readymade-like versions created with automobile hubcaps to a recent Jonathan Adler design that used vintage Barbie dolls to create the sunburst motif. And so, it would seem, whether old or new, expensive or cheap, high- or low-brow, the sunburst mirror, in one form or another, will always be with us.

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